


Evil Pacts for Beginners (or, the Long and the Short of It)

by speccygeekgrrl



Series: even the mistakes aren't really mistakes at all [4]
Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Baby mad scientists, Best Friends, Evil Schemes, Gen, Gymnastics, Ice Cream, Weird family dynamics, like this is really fluffy but also super significant at the same time, super serious pacts, this is so ridiculously wholesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 06:15:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11572068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: Kinga wants gymnastics lessons for her birthday. This is not as sinister as the karate lessons she asked for the year before... or is it? (Of course it is.) Max takes responsibility, not just for the afternoon but for the rest of forever. A deal is sealed as solemnly as possible.





	Evil Pacts for Beginners (or, the Long and the Short of It)

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my god you guys don't even know how much math I did to figure out the timeline but now I know WHEN all the stories from World Domination through the rest of Mistakes I only have plotted yet take place! I am a crazy person. But I am a crazy person having the time of her life. This one is really silly but also important.

Kinga was a handful, but she had everyone in Deep 13 wrapped around her little finger despite her frequent misbehavior. Clayton doted on his daughter exactly like his mother had never doted on him, letting her decide what she wanted to do instead of forcing her into the activities he thought she should do. He tried to guide her opinions, of course, but when she asked for gymnastics lessons for her birthday when she turned 9, that seemed both adorable and relatively harmless... compared to some other things she'd taken a very brief shine to. (The less said about the month of karate lessons, the better.)

This was Max's first summer with freedom at the end of it instead of a return to school. It didn't feel like curtailing that freedom to play chauffeur for Kinga to her gymnastics lessons. He was used to spending his summers babysitting anyways, kept on his toes by the tiny megalomaniac's mischievous plans. She always had more than one reason for anything she wanted to do, and he was curious to find out what the hidden motive for the gymnastics could be. 

Lesson number one was the week after school let out for the summer. By Wednesday, Kinga was sick of playing with Nummy Muffin Coocol Butter and had started drawing up her own plans for a new pet-- "sort of like a bunny, but easier to take care of," she explained when Clayton asked. "Amber says bunnies are hard cause they're picky eaters."

"You're a picky eater," he said, tickling her until she screeched with laughter. "Does that mean I should design an upgraded daughter?"

"I'm not a picky eater," she protested. "Pineapple on pizza is just gross! Anyways you can't upgrade me, I'm already perfect."

"As close as I could get you," he agreed, giving her a squeeze before he let go. "Are you ready to go?"

"I've been ready for _hours_ ," she said. "See?" She took a step back and did a little turn, showing off her gymnastics outfit-- a paint-splash-printed leotard and pale purple stirrup leggings. "I hope they teach me how to cartwheel today!"

"I think that might come a little later," Max said, jingling his dad's keys in one hand as he found them by the door to Deep 13. "Cartwheels are advanced."

" _I'm_ advanced," Kinga said proudly. "I'm top of the line, right Daddy?"

"There's no better child on the planet." Clayton kissed the top of her head and gave her a little push toward Max. "Don't forget to pick her up when it's done," he warned Max, who rolled his eyes.

"Come on, Dr. F. Give me a little more credit than that." 

"You forgot me once," Kinga reminded him, and he flushed slightly.

"I didn't forget you! I was just a little late."

"Because you were playing card games," she said.

"Yeah, but I won that tournament, and no one kidnapped you, so I think it turned out okay." 

"Don't make me wait this time," she said, hands on her hips, and he shook his head.

"I won't. The gymnastics studio is only a couple blocks from the comic shop anyways, I'll be there right on time, I promise."

"Here, you can get ice cream on your way home," Clayton said, handing Max a ten. "Just make sure she doesn't ruin her leotard."

" _Daddy_ ," she sighed heavily. "I'm not a kid any more, I can eat ice cream without messing everything up."

"You're not a kid any more?" His eyebrows shot up. "Then I signed you up for the wrong class. How old are you exactly?"

"You know how old I am, it was just my birthday!"

"Max, how old is she again?"

"She's nine," Max said. "And I'm just about to turn nineteen. Which means _I'm_ not a kid, but I'm pretty sure you still are, squirt..." He ruffled her hair and she smacked his hand away, scowling up at him.

"Okay, I'm a kid, but I'm not a baby," she said grudgingly. "Can we go now? I have places to be."

"Don't let me keep you from them," Clayton said, waving them toward the door. "Have fun, sweetie. Try not to hurt anyone else. Or yourself." Max reflected that he'd put those concerns in the proper order as he lead Kinga out of Deep 13 and up to ground level. No one at Gizmonic Institute seemed to notice the kids living in the subbasement with their fathers-- there were enough urban legends about Deep 13 already flying around, but somehow they were all about Clayton and Frank and none of them were about Kinga and Max. It wasn't like their dads were super obvious about their unusual living situation, and they usually used a service exit that avoided the main campus of the Institute, but Max still wondered sometimes how they'd flown so under the radar.

It was a beautiful late June day, sunny and perfectly warm, and Kinga was full of energy, bounding ahead of Max and then running back to him several times on their way to the car. "What's gotten into you?" he asked with a laugh when she came back to him again. 

"You're so _slow_ ," she said. "Come on! I don't want to be late!"

"You won't be late, we have plenty of time." He unlocked the car while they were still at a distance from it, and Kinga made a beeline for it, already buckled into the passenger seat when he got there. "You know you're supposed to sit in the back."

"You know you won't make me," she chirped, and he shrugged because she was right. Usually Max was more safety-conscious, but it was fun to drive around with his favorite pipsqueak riding shotgun, messing around with the radio until she found something she liked, rolling down her window until her hair whipped around her face. "Max? Will you help me practice once I learn things?"

"Sure," he said. "Just don't expect me to do cartwheels with you. I don't have your natural grace." She didn't have much natural grace either, perpetually bruised from running into things, and she wrinkled her nose at him.

"Not funny."

"Of course I'll help you. That's what I'm here for, right?"

"I thought you were here to keep me out of trouble."

"There's not a person alive who can manage that one," he said with a laugh. "I do what I can."

"You do okay," she said. "Better than Daddy, usually."

"Ha, I wasn't sure if you kept track of that or not."

"He tries but he gets distracted so easy. You pay attention to me."

"Well, yeah. You're fun and interesting." She beamed at him and he ruffled her windblown hair. "Why wouldn't I pay attention to my favorite person?"

"I'm your favorite?"

"Of course you are, silly. Who else would it be?"

"You're my favorite too," she said. "It's gonna be fun ruling the world with you."

"I think we have a ways to go before we get there," Max laughed. "But you keep dreaming big."

"I am dreaming big. All the time. I wanna be ready for it when it happens."

"What do you want to be called when you're in charge of everything?"

"Ummm... I know I don't wanna be called queen."

"Why not?"

"Cause Queen Kinga sounds funny and I don't want people to laugh at me."

"That's an excellent point. Maybe Empress Kinga?"

"Better," she said. "What's a baby empress?"

"I think they're still called princesses."

"I wanna be a cool princess. Like Leia. Not like Cinderella."

"What about Ariel?" he asked, tugging gently on a lock of her hair. She scowled at him.

"Ariel's the worst. She couldn't even talk to Prince Eric. Ursula was cooler."

"Ursula wasn't a princess."

"No. She was a sea witch. Can I be a witch?"

"I don't think you can be a witch and a scientist at the same time," Max said thoughtfully. "Magic and science are separate disciplines."

"Where do witches go to school? Scientists go to Gizmonics. Is there a magic Gizmonics?" Her eyes widened. "Would Daddy still be proud of me if I didn't go to Gizmonics?"

"Your dad would be proud of you no matter what you did. And so would I. I thought you were excited about science, though."

"Science is real," Kinga said with a sigh. "Magic isn't real."

"Magic is definitely real," Max said solemnly. "I've got about a thousand bucks worth of cards in the backseat that say Magic is real."

"Maaaaaax..."

"Isn't this the place?" he asked, parking in front of the strip mall that contained the gymnastics studio. She perked up immediately, and he caught her by the back of her leotard before she could bolt out of the car. "Wait a second! You're going to pull your hair if you try doing gymnastics with it loose, come here..." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bright purple scrunchie. "I got you a new one."

"Oooh..." She let him tie her hair back in a ponytail and turned to look at him when he finished. "Max... what if I'm not good at this?"

"No one's good at anything the first time they do it. That's why you're taking lessons, so you can get good at it." She nodded, and he leaned in conspiratorially. "Why'd you pick gymnastics?"

"Cause when I learn how to cartwheel I can kick people in the face," she chirped. "And cause it looks cool. But mostly the kicking."

"Yeah, that sounds like you," he said with a grin. "You ready for this?"

"So ready!" She was out of the car in an instant, leaving him trailing behind her into the studio. There were a cluster of girls already there, and a tall woman with a clipboard who Kinga walked right up to. "I'm Kinga Forrester," she said, and the woman looked up and caught sight of Max.

"Is this your brother?"

"No," Kinga said, "but he's responsible for me anyways." The gymnastics teacher arched a brow.

"We're cousins," Max said, which was still a lie but not as much of a lie as saying they were siblings. "She's very excited about this class."

"Well, good! The class will be done at six, please come back promptly to get her." Kinga looked up at Max, and he offered her a smile.

"Behave. Be careful. And have fun." She'd manage two of them if he was lucky, almost certainly not all three of them, but she nodded and walked over to where the other girls were talking with each other. He cast one last look at her from the doorway, said a small and directionless prayer that she wouldn't hurt anyone, and headed off to the comic shop to spend an hour playing Magic with whoever happened to be around. He usually would have killed time with the comics, too, but Sandman had only ended a couple of months earlier and he was still bummed out about it being over for good.

At 5:55 he was waiting for her in front of the studio, the only person there who wasn't a mom or dad to a kid in the class. Kinga was the first one out the door, expression that perfect mixture of guilt and pride that meant she hadn't behaved but whatever she'd done had amused herself. "Guess what," she said as she came up to him.

"You kicked the instructor in the face," Max guessed, and she grinned.

"Not yet."

"Kinga..."

"She's really annoying," Kinga said. "But that's not it."

"You didn't kick anyone in the face, did you?"

"Not yet," she said again, impatiently this time. "Don't rush me, learning is a process." He shook his head.

"Of course. Um... you learned how to somersault?"

"Yes but that's not it." He lifted his hands in a silent question and she bounced. "I'm the tallest one in this class."

"Really?" She nodded. "I don't know, you don't seem that tall to me..."

"You're not tall," she pointed out mercilessly. "You're really short. You're the shortest adult I know."

"Get in the car, squirt." She stuck her tongue out at him and did as she was told, and he sighed before he got in too. He was holding out hope for a late growth spurt, but had the feeling that he would never even be average height, let alone tall. It would just be his luck if Kinga ended up towering over him. They both took after their fathers strongly; Frank was short (although not as short as Max) and plump and Dr. F was tall and thin. "You're probably going to be a Valkyrie when you grow up," he said as he buckled in, and Kinga's eyes lit up.

"Don't they kill people?"

"Technically no. I think they just take the souls of the dead to the afterlife."

"I'd rather kill people."

"Do you want to bathe in the blood of your enemies or do you want ice cream?"

"I don't have any enemies yet, so I'll take the ice cream."

"You're going to be the death of me one day."

"Why? You're not my enemy. Unless you double-cross me and we have a battle to the death while it rains so no one can tell I'm crying when I have to kill you."

"That's a little too specific," Max said. "You've thought about this before."

"Don't worry," Kinga said, patting his leg. "I'm not going to kill you unless you leave me no choice. Cause then I'd be really, really sad and alone and I'd miss you forever, even though you betrayed me."

"I'm not going to betray you."

"Then I won't have to be the death of you."

"That wasn't how I meant-- oh, never mind. No, Kinga, you are never going to have to kill me. I promise."

"Good. Cause that would suck. It would be so sad. But you've never made me sad."

"Never? Not even once?"

"No. I've been mad at you but not sad at you."

"Well... good," Max said, a little surprised to hear it. "You make me sad when you're mean to me sometimes."

"Do I make you cry?" She seemed very, very interested in his answer. He glanced at her, then shook his head. "Good," she said, but she sounded a little disappointed. Apparently she'd inherited her dad's sadistic streak along with his build and his inclination toward evil. "I don't wanna make you stop liking me," she added a moment later. Max didn't say anything until he parked the car at the ice cream shop, but they'd been turning into the parking lot when she said it.

"You're not going to make me stop liking you," he said, turning to look at her. "Even if you did make me cry, I'd still like you. Even though you say mean things, I still like you. Even if you burned down cities and killed thousands of people with a death ray, I'd still like you. Because you're my favorite person." She popped her seatbelt and moved over to throw her arms around him.

"I don't wanna do evil things without you," she said, muffled against his shoulder. "You're gonna be my second banana and we'll burn down cities together, okay?"

"Sounds like a plan," he said, hugging her back. "Come on, every great pact to do evil is sealed with soft serve. Let's make it formal."

"Are you sure?" she asked, and he nodded.

"Oh, yeah. It doesn't count unless it's soft serve. Hard ice cream is for pacts to do good, and soft serve is for pacts to do evil."

"What if it's chocolate dipped?"

"That's for _really_ evil pacts."

"I want to make the evilest pact ever with you," she said seriously. "Just in case our dads mess it up. We won't mess it up."

"Okay."

"What do you want to be when I'm an empress?"

"I don't know, I haven't really thought about it."

"You could be a general!"

"I don't think that would suit me very well."

"Um... a king?"

"You can't have an empress and a king."

"So you'll be an emperor, then." 

"That would be weird."

"Well you have to be something. Something really important. Cause you're gonna help me rule the world, right? So why not an emperor?"

"Let's talk about this when we get closer to actually ruling the world," Max said, shaking his head. "You'll think about it differently when you're older."

"I'm just going to get smarter as I get older. But I'm pretty smart already. I think I know what I want."

"What do you want?"

"Chocolate dipped twist," she said, and Max blinked twice and then huffed a laugh.

"Okay. Let's get ice cream, then." Kinga was smart, smarter than most kids her age, but what passed for a domestic life in Deep 13 had left her with no clue about normal relationships. Max was in the same boat, but Max at least knew that he didn't know. It didn't really matter to him yet, he'd made it through high school without ever developing a crush on anyone, and he wasn't sure if he ever wanted to. The closest thing to love he'd ever seen was the bizarre mixture of tenderness and abuse their dads had with each other, and that wasn't what Max wanted for himself. Not having anything at all seemed better than having something he didn't want, at least from where he was standing now.

They both got their cones and sat on the hood of the car to eat them. "How do we make a pact?" Kinga asked. "I want to do it right."

"First you say what you're going to do and you both agree to it, and then you take a bite out of each other's ice cream to seal the deal," Max said, trying not to laugh. She nodded, looking very solemn.

"Okay. We're gonna be evil. We're gonna rule the world and maybe kill some people or a lot of people. We're always gonna stick together and never betray each other and we'll be unstoppable." She looked thoughtful for a moment, and added, "We're always gonna be each other's favorite person. Okay?"

"Sounds good to me," Max said, and held out his cone so she could bite the curl off the top. He was careful biting hers to not shatter the chocolate coating. She looked very satisfied when she sat back to work on her own ice cream. Twice he had to lean over with a napkin and wipe the side of her cone before it could drip onto her leotard, but she managed to finish the entire thing without getting a single drop on her clothes. "Hold still," he said, and she made a face at him as he wiped the chocolate off her mouth.

"I'm not a little kid," she said, and he smiled at her.

"No. But you're my responsibility."

"You have chocolate on your face too," she pointed out, and he rubbed at his mouth with the same napkin.

"Did I get it?"

"Yup."

She was absolutely wired by the time they made it home, running into Deep 13 ready to show off. "Daddy! Look what I learned!" Clayton and Frank looked over from the TV, and Max noticed in the moment before Kinga crashed onto the floor next to her father that Dr. F had been sitting on the floor in front of the couch with his head on Frank's lap and Frank's fingers in his messy shock of hair. 

"You learned something already? My little genius. Let's see it." Clayton sat up straight and pushed his glasses up his nose, smiling at his daughter. She demonstrated a somersault for him, and Clayton and Frank both applauded.

"The teacher said I have a natural aptitude," she said as she got to her feet. "It's fun, I like it."

"You can take lessons as long as you want, as long as you keep your grades up when school starts up again."

"School's out until September," Max chimed in, and she grinned at him. "I guess I can keep driving you to your lessons."

"Yes!" 

"I hope you didn't ruin your appetite with ice cream," Frank said. "Cause we have pizzas coming."

"No pineapple," Kinga said, sticking her tongue out.

"No pineapple on ours," Frank said. "Tainted pizza for them, though."

"It's not tainted, it's magical," Clayton said.

"Magic isn't real," Kinga said.

"Didn't I prove that it is?" Max asked. She stuck her tongue out at him and flopped onto the couch next to Frank, using his arm as a pillow.

"What are we watching?" She frowned at the screen. "Is this your thing again? Where are the robots? I like the robots."

"We're changing the channel," Clayton said hastily, casting around on the floor for the remote. Max reached under the couch and retrieved it, sitting down next to Kinga and flipping through the channels. "You can watch whatever you want until the pizza gets here."

"Cartoons," Kinga said, giving Max the puppy dog eyes. "Animaniacs?"

"Whatever you want," Max said, meaning it as much as he always did.


End file.
